To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
“All right, all right,” Gillings said, irritably waving aside Daffyd’s mild reproval. “But how come she doesn’t know what she is? All right, all right. I know the answer to that, too. All right, what do I do?”
“I want a tracer on any young singer of her description applying for a performer’s license anywhere in the country. And I want to know where she has sung, where she trained, where she came from. She’s gone to cover and she won’t find easy. In the first place, she’s terrified of whatever hit her last night.
And secondly, she’ll have a good idea what happened when the audience found out she wasn’t going to sing again. She has two very good reasons for being scarce.
I also don’t want her frightened out of her wits so let me handle the actual search with my people. I’ll get my propaganda team to alter some of the public info broadcasts subliminally. We might get her to seek us out spontaneously which would be preferable,” Daffyd added, rising.
“Okay, you handle it but I want that girl found and trained or whatever it is you do with them. And quick. I’ll shunt the report on her to your computer.
Shouldn’t take long to trace her.”
It took two days to trace the girl known as Amalda. And the print-out had many gaps.
She’d been born and reared in a small Appalachian commune: educated to her sixteenth year in the County School system which she quit to “travel”…a not un common pattern for an undirected or unmotivated youngster. There was no record of formal music instruction but music was a feature in her environment: no official record of her for several years until she took work in a Florida food control complex. Two applications for performer’s license in Florida were denied by the Audition Board there. The third application was provisionally granted and lapsed without formal request for an extension, but several short term engagements were on record for her as an unamplified, string-instrumented folk singer. A new application as apprentice, non-singer, had been filed in
Washington, D. C. four months before: one engagement was listed without a termination date. Then Daffyd had a check made on the play in which she had appeared. Amalda, who had started as a walk-on, had been abruptly promoted to an important supporting role. The play was scheduled for a metropolitan opening in three weeks.
Although Daffyd had only a superficial acquaintance with the mechanics of the
Performing Arts, there were several glaring contradictions in this report. And no explanation for Amalda’s sudden appearance as a self-accompanied soloist in a minority entertainment hall of dubious reputation.
In the meantime, he and Sally worked with the propaganda department to include in the public information broadcasts a subliminal appeal for someone in Amalda’s situation. Daffyd also got in touch with the play’s producer.
“I’ve had enough trouble with that flitting bird,” Norman Kabilov told op Owen.
“If she does show up, I’ll tell her straight: she gets no more contracts and she shouldn’t ever hope to get a PP license approved. Not if I have any connection in the PA.”
“What kind of trouble did you have with Amalda?” Daffyd asked, injecting placatory thoughts at the irritated little man.
“Troubles, plural, not trouble singular,” and Norman Kabilov glowered at op Owen.
Daffyd knew the man was considerably perplexed by the Center’s interest in his ex-actress.
“First, she latches on to my stage manager, Red Vaden…good man, Vaden.
Solid. Dependable. Only this little twit has him hopping to her tune like he’d never tried to brush off a stage-struck tail before. Red doesn’t ask many favors so when he wants this bird in the cast…so when the show travels, he’s not lacking what he’s been having regular…I say, yes. What harm? Suddenly I got
Red begging me to give her an audition for one of the secondary leads. I already got a good PA picked out for the part…” Kabilov’s expression told Daffyd that his choice had been personal rather than professional. “…but I gotta keep ‘em happy so I audition the girl.” The little producer frowned now, his thoughts vivid to Daffyd. The man had been surprised out of boredom at the quality of the audition and immediately signed Amalda for the role, despite the fact that he’d known he’d be in for a heavy tune with the disappointed candidate. “Mind you, it wasn’t that great a part until that kid reads it.”
Another headshake of perplexity. “I dunno how she did it because she sure had no theatre arts credits but I couldn’t not give her the part. And then the author comes to rehearsal and hell, he’s rewriting the part to give her more. I damn near have a jeopardy action from Carla Jacobs who’s the name in the play. Only
Red goes to work on her and she quiets down like a lily. And you gotta believe that Jacobs don’t handle that easy. She’s pushing fifty, y’see, and any new bird is a threat. Funny thing,” and Kabilov stared off above Daffyd’s head, his mind taking up and discarding a hundred different glimpses of Carla Jacobs in high tantrum, Carla Jacobs soothed and very few snatches of Amalda. The man was unconsciously censoring those recollections. “Once La Jacobs got to working with the kid, things were okay. Wanta see the reviews we got?”
Daffyd hastily assented but he was given no chance to do more than glance at the commendatory headlines in the fasc sheets.
“As long as we were in Washington, it was okay. But the minute we got to
Jerhattan, troubles! La Jacobs storms in here with her lawyers and her current man and she won’t play with that creature anymore. In fact, she gets so absolutely violent we gotta trank her. Now I can’t lose La Jacobs or I lose the theatre and the play since that’s the contract. So I tell Red to find his bird another nest. I can’t afford trouble. And they both walk!” He was indignant.
“Just like that. He walks. A guy I’d sworn was 100% dependable walks out of the show two weeks before opening. On account of a scrawny bird!”
If Norman Kabilov looked the picture of outraged innocence, he “sounded” like a man reprieved from an unknown ordeal. However, he did have publicity shots of
Amalda and Red Vaden, which he appeared relieved to give Daffyd: as if by getting rid of everything reminding him of this unsettling episode he could erase it from his memory.
Daffyd op Owen had his best finders scan the pictures, he sent copies to the LEO office and, on an off-chance, gave a final print to his best precog.
“You better find that girl,” Gillings told op Owen, “or I’ll find her and make her answer-officially-for that riot.”
“Frank, don’t provoke another Maggie O.”
Though the comset was not color, Daffyd was certain that Gillings’ face changed shade.
“We’re doing all we can,” he went on soothingly, “to find her but there’s no way of forcing her to come to us.”
Gillings growled something dire as he broke the connection.
There were days when Gillings was not Daffyd’s only cross. He and Sally had spent most of the morning trying to figure out a way to attract Amalda to them. Lester Welch walked in, listened a few minutes and then snorted in disgust.
“Why don’t you just find out where this Red Vaden lives? If he was so gone on the girl he’d leave a successful show, he’s probably tied up tight with her. And if he’s at leisure,” and Lester grinned as he used the performing arts’ euphemism, “he’s surely checked into the PA Casting Agency.”
Op Owen closed his eyes briefly before he thanked Lester with a good grace.
“I’m not sure what we’d ever do without your common sense, Les.”
“Oh, someone else’d tell you your nose is on your face.” And Les left.
“This is one time I wish I were a kinetic,” Daffyd said with a wistful sigh, thinking all kinds of disasters, of a minor sort, to befall the dour New